Strategic Plan, Research Goals

This column identifies the problems that programs want to solve. For example, a research focus can be a hazardous exposure that contributes to an illness or injury; an aspect of the organization of work; a risk factor for injuries, illnesses, or decreased well-being; or a type of injury.

The worker populations with the greatest burden include either workers in a specific job or setting, or workers with a specific hazardous exposure. In some cases, additional worker populations experience a high burden because of the changing nature of work and employment arrangements.

NIOSH has developed the following taxonomy for work arrangements.¹

• Standard work arrangement – An arrangement that is secure or permanent (career). These workers have employee status, stable and adequate pay, access to health insurance, paid leave and retirement benefits, a regular, full-time work schedule, and the ability to negotiate their schedule and take time off.
• Non-standard work arrangement – An arrangement that differs in some way from the standard arrangement.
• Contingent workers – Those with a job that they do not expect to last (see alternative definitions used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) with the Contingent Work Survey²).
• Precarious employment – Employment with some degree of the following: insecurity, temporariness, vulnerability to unfair treatment, lack of ability to negotiate pay, benefits, and work schedule, lack of ability to take leave, and lack of social safety net including unemployment and workers’ compensation insurance.

Work arrangement categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, some workers in standard arrangements may experience unfair treatment, a characteristic of precarious employment.

The intermediate goal tables refer to two other worker populations:

• Vulnerable workers – Different factors can make some workers more vulnerable than others to workplace illness or injury. These differences include factors, such as age, race/ethnicity, class, nativity, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, intersex status, English language skills, and disability status; economic trends, such as growth of the temporary workforce; and organizational factors, such as business size. Vulnerable workers have increased rates of work-related injuries and illnesses.
• Small businesses – For most occupational safety and health research purposes, NIOSH considers small businesses as having fewer than 50 employees. Smaller businesses often have fewer resources to devote to occupational safety and health because they face a riskier economic environment and have greater financial limitations than larger businesses.
• Young worker – NIOSH defines young workers as those between the ages of 15 and 24. Federal and state child labor laws, which regulate the employment of minors, are tied to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 (“Fair Labor Standards Act,” 1938). The FLSA limits the types of jobs youths aged 14 to 17 years are allowed to perform, the number of hours they may work, and the timing of these hours. However, national injury and fatality data usually do not include youth under age 15.

• Older workers– There is no consensus on the definition of “older worker.” Generally, in the United States, research efforts tend to focus on the age group 55 years or older. But other age thresholds are sometimes used, such as 50 years or older (AARP) and 40 years or older (Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967).  However, it is important to acknowledge that chronological age, by itself, is not always a strong predictor of workplace outcomes, and that aging is a complex process influenced by many factors. As a result, there can be great individual variability in the work ability and occupational safety and health outcomes among older workers. Therefore, researchers should be aware that it might be of more value to think about a worker’s lifespan and not an absolute chronological age at which all workers can be considered “older.”

Each intermediate goal is also accompanied by a short description of the burden and need, based on the Burden, Need, and Impact Method. Together, the tables and description guide researchers to high priority areas, while allowing flexibility for new ideas.

1. Bushnell T, Scharf T, Alterman T, Cummings KJ, Luckhaupt SE, Ray TK, Rosa RR, Su CP [2017]. Developing a Taxonomy of Work Arrangements to Examine Relationships with Worker Safety, Health, and Well-Being. Poster presented at Work, Stress and Health 2017, Minneapolis, MN, June 8, http://www.apa.org/wsh/past/2017/preliminary-program.pdf

2. BLS [2005] Contingent and alternative employment arrangements. Washington DC: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/conemp.pdf

NIOSH has adopted an organizing framework comprised of four types of research:

• Basic/etiologic: Builds a foundation of scientific knowledge to base future interventions. Most laboratory research falls into this category, as well as exposure assessment.
• Intervention: Engages in the development, testing, or evaluation of a solution to an occupational safety and health problem or the improvement of an existing intervention. Intervention is a broad term that includes engineering controls, personal protective equipment, training, and fact sheets, and other written materials intended to inform and change behavior, among other occupational safety and health solutions.
• Translation: Discovers strategies to translate research findings and theoretical knowledge to practices or technologies in the workplace. This type of research seeks to understand why available, effective, evidence-based interventions are not being adopted.
• Surveillance: Develops new surveillance methods, tools, and analytical techniques.